Conventional print advertising mailings have been decreasing both in total volume and the size of individual campaigns. Printed advertising mail has succumbed to the speed and lower cost of electronic mail (“e-mail”) campaigns and to the proliferation of segmented advertising opportunities presented by cable, satellite and digital TV programming. The ability of electronic media to deliver targeted advertising to smaller audiences, with increased frequency and variation of copy—and at low cost—has created a difficult competitive climate for print media. Mass print mailings cannot offer the same price points as electronic media due to, among other reasons, a lack of an efficient means of utilizing consumer data which is mined from electronic as well as traditional mailing list sources.
High levels of personalization in targeted print mail packages have shown the ability to raise response rates to a level which is competitive with electronic media. However, with a high degree of personalization comes a high level of intrusiveness which can be a disadvantage in an era marked with heightened consumer awareness about identity theft. Theoretically, the combination of personalization and content customization would reduce the intrusiveness of personalization if used alone; however, no presently known and low cost method of print mailing has been able to achieve that goal.
Many different means of variable data printing (“VDP”) are currently being employed by different manufacturers to produce personalized direct mail packages. Some of these technologies are well developed and others are emerging. These mailing packages are now utilizing not only traditional means of printing such as web-offset, sheet-fed offset, flexography, and the like, but are now starting to utilize newer digital print technologies. Some of these new technologies combine the ability to print variable four color process with personalization of copy to the recipient. However, many of these newer technologies have limited use in the direct mail package production arena due to lack of print area at a competitive price, lack of color fidelity, reduced speed of throughput and limited conversion options.
U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,939,888; 5,156,384 and 5,029,832 describe current methods of producing highly personalized matched mailings that employ many different converting technologies. These efforts, however, suffer from several shortcomings including, without limitation: format restrictions, slow production, hand assembly, high waste, exorbitant costs and the inability to convert digital outputs. They also did not foresee or allow for the merging of different technologies into the workflow as quantities decreased and versioning or targeting increased. Nor did they allow for advancements in the utilization of segmentation and customization which have been driven to new heights by the growth of data mining and predictive analytics by marketers.
Current methodologies of producing highly customized and personalized print mailings such as in-line finishing, camera matching on inserters, forms matching on collators and read/write addressing do not allow for utilization of new or emerging technologies or permit a variety of commodity production processes to be rules-driven participants in an integrated print mail campaign.